Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Zappa's Stage series celebrating 20 years

I can still remember the excitement when I got it in my hand...the first volume of Frank Zappa's You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore. And that is 20 years ago now.
It was just around the time of the European leg of Zappa's 1988 tour. (His last tour.)
I recall sitting in the lobby of the Falkoner Theatret in Copenhagen just before the concert when someone pulled out a copy of the two brand new 2 CD sets, You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore (YCDTOSA) and Guitar. I was very excited just to be able to read through the song titles. The excitement may also have depended on the fact that I had tickets for three different Zappa shows that week!

Great mix
Anyway, the first volume of YCDTOSA, the retrospective collection of live tracks from Frank's entire carreer, was awaited for a long time by the fans, and I think most of us loved it.
Unfortunately, some of the following YCDTOSA volumes were not of similar standards.
Volume 1 is a great mix of different bands and great performances and it included several unexpected tracks as the previouosly unreleased song Rollo that came at the end of the Yellow Snow suite (London 1979).
So along with all this live King Crimson stuff, Steely Dan and David Bowie, you can also expect some You Can't Do That On Stage music on Radio Dupree in May.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had just bought a new hifi stereo system with my hard earned cash I'd saved waiting tables and I remember the version of The Torture Never Stops from YCDTOSA blasting out and sounding so good turned up loud. In fact I eventually blew my new speakers on this CD!

Nebukadnessar Stephenson and Sigurd Huckle said...

I have a clear memory from such an incident ca 20 years ago. I lived in an apartment, it was daytime and I put on Frank's Ship Arriving Too Late...album and the song I Come From Nowhere. It's a quite aggressive song with lots of distorted guitar, kind of Frank's metal style.
Soon the phone rang. It was a young woman living on the next floor: "What is that loud and horrible noise?" She wasn't mad but rather confused and almost scared so I had to turn it down.

Nebukadnessar Stephenson and Sigurd Huckle said...

I rememer playing really loud...cranked up the volume as much as I dared so I wouldn't damage my new NAD/Denon stereo system.

MetDeZachteG said...

ha. i have volumes 2-6 but not 1.
bought all those at once when a local store went out of business and sold their stock for very very little money.